26 September 2012

LESOTHO : LBA Gives Women Platform

MASERU - The Lesotho Basketball Association creates a platform for women as they plan to host the women basketball tournament on Saturday 22nd September 2012 at Lehakoe Cultural Centre.

The aim is to create the platform for ladies basketball since their few basketball club members of the association and it is open for High Schools and National Basketball League (NBL) ladies clubs. The association is also expecting the member clubs to register with M150 to encourage clubs to participate.

At the closing of the business on Friday last week only two high schools and no NBL member have registered for the tournament, the NBL clubs expected are Khubetsoana All Stars (KTA), Rovers, Lerotholi Polytechnics, Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT) Rangers, National Heath Training College (NHTC), Centre of Accounting Studies (CAS) and Shines.

While the High Schools are Methodist High School, Lesotho High School, St James, ‘Mabathoana, Sefika, St Patricks, St Johns, Johnson Baker, Bereng, St Stevens, Masitise, St Paul, St Boniface and Machabeng the 2012 High School Top 4 champions. The two high schools which have registered are Sefika and Mabathoana High Schools.

Some of these clubs which have not yet been registered have members in the Executive Committee of the association and Women in Sports, while this tourney meant to empower women who play basketball. The tournament was expected to be hosted during the Women’s Month but due to LBA activities last month they could not. Registration per club is M150, 00.

Lerato Mochekela - the association’s Office Administrator told Informative Newspaper that, “Although the tournament is meant to empower women but they relented to register, LBA decided to organise this tourney in order to entice many clubs because few clubs have registered with National Basketball League and we - Basketball Women In Sport - are planning to host an Open Tournament and we wish to invite international clubs.”

“We want to ensure that we will have enough clubs which can compete with international clubs from Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Namibia, Zambia and Mozambique in the future. Only if we host tournaments of this nature we can compete against such clubs and also have the strong Women National Squads, we are left with few days before the tournament and we have to drawn the tourney fixture before the 22nd September 2012,”

They hosted High School Basketball Top 8 at Maputsoe in Leribe at St Boniface High School on the 25th August 2012, on the 31st August till the 01st September 2012 the national association organised a two days workshop on Life Skills in Maseru, while on the 08th September they have High Schools Top 4 at Lehakoe Cultural Centre in Maseru.